Renaissance history

Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca, 1304-1374) worked over many years on his long historical text about the Lives of ancient Roman military heroes, De viris illustribus (On Famous Men). Left unfinished at his death, the text was completed by 1379 by Petrarch’s colleague, Lombardo della Seta. Within a decade, De viris illustribus was translated into Italian; and in 1476 the Libro degli uomini famosi was printed in Poiano outside of Verona by the eccentric humanist and scribe, Felice Feliciano (1433–1479/1480). The edition includes a peculiar feature: preceding each of the Lives is a page on which is printed an interlace woodcut border within which, however, no image appears.

This volume is
based on an international colloquium held at the Warburg Institute, London,
on 21–2 June 2013, and entitled ‘Philosophy and Knowledge in the Renaissance:
Interpreting Aristotle in the Vernacular’. It situates and explores vernacular
Aristotelianism in a broad chronological context, with a geographical focus on
Italy. The disciplines covered include political thought, ethics, poetics,
rhetoric, logic, natural philosophy, cosmology, meteorology and metaphysics;
and among the genres considered are translations, popularizing commentaries, dialogues
and works targeted at women. The wide-ranging and rich material presented in
the volume is intended to stimulate scholars to develop this promising area of
research still...

Albinia de la Mare (1932–2001), OBE, FBA, Professor of Palaeography at King's College London, was one of the last century's outstanding palaeographers and the world's leading authority on Italian Renaissance manuscripts. In November 2011 a conference was held at King's College and the Warburg Institute to honour her memory, and this volume offers revised versions of most of the papers read on that occasion, as well as three additional contributions. Tilly de la Mare had exceptionally wide interests, including key individuals involved in manuscript and literary production, as represented here by studies on Vespasiano da Bisticci, Sozomeno da Pistoia, Matteo Contugi da Volterra, Lorenzo di Francesco Guidetti, Giorgio Antonio Vespucci,...

The rediscovery of Ptolemy’s Geography has long been hailed as a key moment in the emergence of Renaissance culture, symbolizing a new rational spatiality, and preparing the way for the Age of Discovery. And yet, the process of the Geography’s introduction, integration and impact in western Europe, as the essays in this volume collectively suggest, was more complex and less predictable than has been traditionally assumed. Whereas previously Ptolemy’s maps attracted most scholarly attention, in this volume the textual tradition of the Geography – Ptolemy’s text, added prefaces, annotations and treatises – stand at the centre. Bringing together a wealth of previously unexplored sources and contexts,...

Traditionally thought of as the home of the Counter-Reformation papacy and of the Inquisition, Rome has never been regarded as a major scientific centre. Yet the new research presented here, much of it based on previously unstudied archival material, highlights the special character of science and medicine in the city and its institutions: academies (above all, the famous Accademia dei Lincei), hospitals, libraries, monasteries, universities and courts, as well as the papal Curia and the Congregation of the Index. The approach is thoroughly interdisciplinary, ranging over many disciplines - engineering, architecture, chemistry, botany, mathematics, astronomy and geography - and covering a diversity of topics, from atlases and anatomical...

The present volume arose from a colloquium on magic and divination intended to apply the study of the history of the classical tradition to the specific area of magic. Magic is interpreted in a very broad sense, and the book includes discussions of Neoplatonic theurgy, Hermetic astrological talismans, the occult activities of oracles and witches, demon-possession, popular beliefs and party tricks. While several articles look at magic in the Graeco-Roman tradition, others deal with practices in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Byzantium and Russia. The emphasis is on showing transmission through time, and across cultural and linguistic borders, and the continuing importance of classical or ancient authorities among writers of more recent periods....